Swizletek's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Irish Coffee]

Very nice to listen to, but I have a few points of (hopefully constructive) criticism

First things first, in my opinion lose the rain backing completely. It's nice and it has a cool effect, but having it there just completely limits how the piece can be used. Plus, you want people to like the piece for what it is without necessarily having to make it seem more ambient. Besides, most people here know about rainymood to be able to add the sound in themselves if they'd like.

So onto the piece itself. Brilliant chord structure, nice instrumentation, nice atmosphere and layering. I think the two areas where it was let down a bit however was the form and the melody.

I always feel a bit harsh saying this, but when a piece gets submitted as a jazz or pop song I always try to judge the piece relative to a proper song, as opposed to merely as background music, which I think is what you've mainly achieved.

Most songs fit a general format of "Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus"
This piece has a form more like "Intro, chorus, chorus, chorus, chorus, chorus," with each successive chorus being slightly more thickly layered.

What this means, is for the listener the piece gets a bit repetitive. What you've done at 1:42 is the right sort of idea; it creates interest and makes the listener want to keep listening. I think though that you could probably bring this out a bit more and extend it - change the time signature or key or whatever completely if you have to.

The other thing is the melody. The melody is what you can essentially sing along to (regardless of whether it's a vocal part or not). Really, if you tried singing along to this, you couldn't, because well, there isn't a melody. It's completely up to you whether you want to go and actually include a singable melody line, but for this to become a proper song and more than just background music, it's somewhat crucial.

It's not really easy going back and completely changing up so much of the song, but if you can write this in an hour, surely you're capable of extending this into a proper, catchy song. I would like to see this worked on some more though, theres a lot of potential but it's just not QUITE there yet from a musical standpoint.

LimeDisciple responds:

This is why I love newgrounds. You criticizing bastards are usually dead on.
Your right about the rain from an anonymous viewer perspective, but I don't write my songs for them, I write them for me. I want to hear rain, so I put rain. I will make a second version without it though.
I put it in jazz because the genre selection on here sucks, and the misc section for audio is filled with bullshit and 99% of pieces there get overlooked. I obviously didn't want this to get overlooked, yet it's not electronic so I didn't put it in ambient. If there was an acoustic genre, that's where this would go. So please don't judge this as a jazz piece.
Of course it is repetitive, it is background music after all. And for the chords I was using there was not much room to progress. Not an excuse by far, just didn't want to kill the song by overdoing anything. Simple is good.
The good majority of songs have vocal melodies. Again I write for me and this song shouldn't have vocals, or any lead for that matter. Eno's rule is it should be as listenable as it is ignorable.
But I'm glad you like the song, I'll take the other pieces of your review into count and make a second, livelier version whilst still retaining the mellow atmosphere.
Thanks a lot for your time and a good, honest fair review. This site needs more cats like you.

[The One]

Ok so there were some good moments in there, but I think for the most you need to sit down and think about what you really want to accomplish before you start writing. To me though, it sounded like you really just went about the piece by trying random notes and hoping something nice would come up, and unfortunately this approach doesn't usually work too well.

So where to go from here...

For starters, the strings sound off. I'm not sure what sound file you're using, but for this type of music try keeping things pure and undistorted; especially if you're writing for a girl. In my experiences, remixing sounds and finding a good balance and all that should probably come near the end of actually writing the piece.

Ok so onto the actual content. At the moment theres only really one line, which kind of staggers from note to note. I recon start off by having one instrument play one note at a time, ending the next where the next starts. At the moment there are some absolutely awful clashes where the notes just don't go together, so avoid this by just one note being played at a time. Once you have a pretty basic idea, it's on to the next step.

What I'd recommend doing next, is taking the idea you've made, and then enriching it by turning it into a harmony line by having more than one instrument playing it at once. It helps to know some musical theory here to know how to structure the chords and the harmony.

Once you've done all this, then finally add a melody over the top, which is usually done in a higher octave.

I hate to dismantle what you've done, but in my opinion this piece still needs quite a bit of work. I'll be more than happy to help out where I can if you'd like, but good luck with your future composing.

Pissomatik responds:

The overlapping was on purpose. As for everything else, maybe you're right. Sakura plugin for FL Studio. Violin 4 preset. I've done essentially what you said there in the past with many of my shitty pieces of shit and they tend to sound too programmed and robotic. I'm attempting to add a bit more of a human quality to it.

[IC Bok Railway]

What's there already is really good, but the problem is there's absolutely no melodic line.
Basically, this is a very well written accompaniment, but without anything running over the top it just sounds incomplete.
If you put a saxophone (or other instrumental) line over the top, theres a lot of potential for this to be awesome, but until then it just doesn't quite sound finished.

Of course it's your piece and I don't know your intentions, it could still have its uses as a background loop or such.

JacoTimothyLeo responds:

Yeah I liked it how it was when I finished it, but thanks for the feedback, probably would have sounded better with another instrument thrown in there

[RR: DK Arcade 75m]

Experimenting with sound effects is fine, but personally I just found it annoying, and it sort of undermines the piece as being usable in any actual submission.

The actual melodic line is good, but it doesn't really loop around as an entire piece. Really, theres only about 20 seconds of looping melodic material.

If you're making it into a two minute piece it really has to go somewhere or otherwise all you're doing is making the file size larger than necessary.

[4One Surrealism -remix-]

Repetitive

first things first, this shouldn't be in the 'classical' category, but I'm not letting that affect my score.

When I listened to it, I was waiting for some sort of change up or some sort of development. Anything to create interest for the listener. Sad to say, there was none. The piece has a pretty solid foundation, but it seems like there was a lot of copy paste going on.
The piece had only very minor development, and nowhere in it was there any solid contrast or a change in key or just any sort of variation. In simple terms, it was just boring to listen to.

I'm not trying to be harsh, and the piece definately has potential.

[Requiem in D]

Needs more development

The concept itself isn't bad, but theres little to no variation within the piece.
Given its a loop, theres still pretty much no rhythmic or dynamic variation at all.

Also for a bit of it, the violins sounded like they were fighting eachother for the melody rather than harmonising together. Ofcorse this may have been your intention.

Lastly, it loops around alright, but not great. Theres still a bit of a jolt on the repeat.

Cloudsabove responds:

...I definitely agree. It certainly isn't one of my best compositions. It was more of a test piece to try some new VSTIs.
Anyway, thanks for the review.

[Evil Schemes]

Good, but needs development

Clips of the piece would definately suit a evil scene in a cartoon, but i felt the piece had the same sort of drive and force to it throughout the entire 3 minutes, it sounded repetitive.
Its good, but it's lacking any real change or development ~ a less intense middle section and/or a massive climax at the end.
If you can add that, it'd create a LOT more suspense and interest after the first minute or so

Maverlyn responds:

Thank you for this much needed feedback.. i will try to make it as you said and repost :)